Huge Queues at Ben Gurion Airport Customs Due to work Dispute

Hundreds of passengers are being held up because of a work dispute between customs employees and Finance Ministry.

By Gil Ronen

First Publish: 6/19/2014, 12:52 PM

tourists at Ben-Gurion airport

Flash 90

Long lines of incoming passengers have formed at the customs inspection positions at Ben Gurion Airport Thursday morning, because of a work dispute between the customs workers and the Finance Ministry. The customs officials are purposely making every single passenger pass through the Red Track, which involves having his luggage opened and inspected, and not the Green Track, through which most passengers are usually allowed to pass if they have no goods to declare.

The empolyees are unhappy about their wages and about the fact that no one in the Finance Ministry wants to sit down and talk to them, they said.

Customs employees at Ben Gurion Airport told Maariv-NRG that they have been slowing down their work for a week, and that in previous days they almost stopped inspecting luggage, allowing people to pass through customs more or less freely.

Despite these measures, they said, they did manage to confiscate smuggled diamonds worth 800,000 shekels.

The customs workers are threatening to slow down work at the ports, as well. “All of the imports will stop,” an unidentified source told Maariv-NRG. “We will allow only exports, so as not to harm the industrial sector.”